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This week we honor Bessie Blount, a feisty African-American inventor of the feeding tube for folks in hospitals.
We love this one account from The NY Times about her defiance as a small child forbidden to write with her left hand:
So she taught herself to write with her teeth and her toes, figuring, “If it was wrong to write with my left hand, then it was wrong to write with my right hand.”
Working as a nurse she later went on to teach amputees to write with their feet and their teeth!
Later on in life Bessie went on to invent the feeding tube, and while unlike other brilliant African American female inventors we have mentioned, she did become acknowledged but didn’t quite reap the financial benefits of her invention as it wasn’t seen as economically viable…
We applaud Bessie Blount and admire her rebellious, feisty nature against all odds.